Job Description
Lead Quality Engineer
Location: National*
Closing Date: 8th March 2026
Interviews: w/c 23rd March 2026
Grade: Grade 6
(MoJ candidates who are on a specialist grade, will be able to retain this grade on lateral transfer)
Salary: London: £75,674 – £87,875 (which may include an allowance up to £12,201)
National: £71,381 – £83,700 (which may include an allowance of up to £12,319)
Working Pattern: Full-time/Part-time/Flexible
Contract Type: Permanent
Vacancy number: 15149
*We offer a hybrid working model, allowing for a balance between remote work and time spent in your local office. Office locations can be found ON THIS MAP
The Role
We’re recruiting for a Lead Quality Engineer here at Justice Digital, to be part of our warm and collaborative LAA Digital team.
This role aligns against Lead Test Engineer from the Government Digital and Data Framework
The work we do is incredibly important to some of the most vulnerable people in our society. LAA Digital seeks to provide swift access to legal aid for those who need it and ensure efficient payment to providers of those services.
As a Lead Quality Engineer, you will provide expert guidance, coaching, and mentorship to teams, ensuring that best practices are adopted and embedded. You will be responsible for defining and overseeing strategic quality practices, advocating for early testing involvement and a shift towards a proactive, quality-first culture. Your role will be instrumental in influencing quality metrics, governance, and continuous optimisation of strategies, test plans, and methodologies.
This role requires a combination of technical expertise, leadership and the ability to influence organisational change.
The Team
You will be part of a forward thinking and innovative community, working closely with the engineering community, product managers, user researchers, designers, business analysts, and delivery managers to embed quality and testing excellence.
We cultivate an inclusive, diverse, transparent and agile environment. We believe in building quality into our products, systems and services and that quality is everyone’s responsibility. We encourage collaboration, knowledge sharing and continuous improvement.
To help picture your life at MoJ Justice Digital please take a look at our blog and our Digital and Technology strategy 2025
Key Responsibilities:
Work with the Head of Test and Head of Engineering to ensure strategic, robust, scalable and secure testing methodologies are adopted.
Establish and oversee quality metrics and key performance indicators, ensuring continuous improvements in quality practices and processes across teams.
Mentor and coach teams in holistic testing practices, integrating quality practices from the beginning and at every stage of the software development lifecycle
Influence and lead decisions on functional and non-functional testing methodologies, ensuring they are effectively implemented across various domains such as API, Web UI, ETL, Mobile, Desktop, SaaS, and Infrastructure testing.
Set organisational-wide standards for quality approaches that foster best practices.
Define and implement test engineering best practices such as source control, SOLID principles, object-oriented programming, and continuous testing strategies.
Influence technology choices across the organisation, ensuring appropriate and scalable solutions are adopted for testing and quality assurance that leverage automation effectively.
Advance the adoption of CI/CD pipeline testing, ensuring seamless integration of automated tests within software delivery workflows and provide visibility of quality status across the organisation.
Highlight dependencies and testing risks at an organisational level, ensuring quality practices are aligned with business objectives.
Foster a culture of learning, experimentation, and continuous improvement, ensuring that teams adopt industry-leading testing methodologies and innovations.
Provide thought leadership on quality engineering best practices, driving the long-term quality vision for the organisation.
If this feels like an exciting challenge, something you are enthusiastic about, and want to join our team please read on and apply!
Benefits
37 hours per week and flexible working options including working from home, working part-time, job sharing, or working compressed hours.
A £1k per person learning budget is in place to support all our people, with access to best in class conferences and seminars, accreditation with professional bodies, fully funded vocational programmes and e-learning platforms
Staff have 10% time to dedicate to develop & grow
Generous civil service pension based on defined benefit scheme, with employer contributions of 28.97% from April 1st 2024 (Contribution Rates)
25 days leave (plus bank holidays) and 1 privilege day usually taken around the Kings’ birthday. 5 additional days of leave once you have reached 5 years of service.
Compassionate maternity, adoption, and shared parental leave policies, with up to 26 weeks leave at full pay, 13 weeks with partial pay, and 13 weeks further leave. And maternity support/paternity leave at full pay for 2 weeks, too!
Wellbeing support including access to the Calm app.
Nurturing professional and interpersonal networks including those for Carers & Childcare, Gender Equality, PROUD and SPIRIT
Bike loans up to £2500 and secure bike parking (subject to availability and location)
Season ticket loans, childcare vouchers and eye-care vouchers.
5 days volunteering paid leave.
Some offices may have a subsidised onsite Gym.
Person Specification
Essential
Proven experience defining and leading test strategies within large-scale digital projects, with an understanding of the benefits of agile and multi-disciplinary approaches.
Ability to collaborate and influence cultural change and around quality engineering.
Experience in mentoring and coaching teams, embedding quality engineering best practices.
Proven experience of all areas of the testing lifecycle with a strong knowledge of testing methodologies (functional and non-functional), tools, best practices and continuous integration and delivery approaches.
Experience with test automation, test tools and frameworks, including Playwright, Selenium, Cypress, Postman, Bruno, Pact and CI/CD tooling
Ability to clearly communicate complex technical concepts effectively.
Experience working with cloud-based testing environments for example AWS, Kubernetes.
Experience in implementing innovative quality solutions and sharing their skills with others.
Strong problem-solving and risk management skills.
Willingness to be assessed against the requirements for SC clearance
We welcome the unique contribution diverse applicants bring and do not discriminate based on culture, ethnicity, race, nationality or national origin, age, sex, gender identity or expression, religion or belief, disability status, sexual orientation, educational or social background or any other factor.
Our values are Purpose, Humanity, Openness, and Together. Find out more here about how we celebrate diversity and an inclusive culture in our workplace.
The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service D&I Strategy.
How to Apply
Candidates must submit CV and Statement of Suitability (500 words max) describing how you meet the following criteria:
“Proven experience defining and leading test strategies within large-scale digital projects, with an understanding of the benefits of agile and multi-disciplinary approaches.”
Application Guidance
Please access the following link for guidance on how to apply and how to complete a Personal Statement
In Justice Digital, we recruit using a combination of the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability and Success Profiles Frameworks. We will assess your Experience, Technical Skills and the following Behaviours during the assessment process:
Working together
Changing and improving
Leadership
Managing a Quality Service
Communicating and Influencing
A diverse panel will review your application against the Person Specification above.
Successful candidates who meet the required standard will then be invited to a 1-hour panel interview, which will include a presentation based on a task to be provided in advance, held via video conference.
Should we receive a high volume of applications, a pre-sift based on:
“Proven experience of all areas of the testing lifecycle with a strong knowledge of testing methodologies (functional and non-functional), tools, best practices and continuous integration and delivery approaches.”
“Experience with test automation, test tools and frameworks, including Playwright, Selenium, Cypress, Postman, Bruno, Pact and CI/CD tooling.”
“Experience working with cloud-based testing environments for example AWS, Kubernetes.”
will be conducted before the sift.
The panel will be conducting a sift on the following criteria from the Person Specification above:
“Proven experience defining and leading test strategies within large-scale digital projects, with an understanding of the benefits of agile and multi-disciplinary approaches.”
“Ability to collaborate and influence cultural change and best practice around quality engineering.”
“Proven experience of all areas of the testing lifecycle with a strong knowledge of testing methodologies (functional and non-functional), tools, best practices and continuous integration and delivery approaches.”
“Experience with test automation, test tools and frameworks, including Playwright, Selenium, Cypress, Postman, Bruno, Pact and CI/CD tooling.”
Candidates who do not demonstrate examples/details of their experience of the requirements stated under the Person Specification above in their CV and Statement of Suitability will be rejected on this basis.
Should you be unsuccessful in the role that you have applied for but demonstrate the capability for a role at a lower level, we reserve the right to discuss this opportunity with you and offer you the position without needing a further application.
A reserve list may be held for up to 12 months, from which further appointments may be made.
Use of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
Terms & Conditions
Please review our Terms and Conditions which set out how we recruit and provide further information related to the role and salary arrangements.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact digitalanddatarecruitment@justice.gov.uk
